Spamming and half-assed Narnia meta
Mar. 15th, 2005 12:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseSo, Narnia seems to be eating my brain.
Of course, this is nothing new. Narnia was my proto-fandom, and when I was seven I had this book that was a "companion"-type thing that had definitions for everything in the books and I used to have my friends quiz me and yeah, I was a little dork over those books.
But all of a sudden I'm coming back to them and this is different. It's nothing so simple or so innocent. Right now it's about perversion, in a way, about taking this innocent little kids' book with Christian messages up the wazoo and making into sex and lies and violence and desire and repulsion and temptation and falling. There's a thrill to doing that sort of thing with any children's book, I think, and I'm not entirely sure why. But with Narnia there's this other part where you know that the world in nowhere near so pure as Lewis writes it, that you know that there's a dark underbelly of Narnia just like everything else. Lewis tried to take all the old pagan stuff and weave it into a sweet little story, pure and neutered, and that's the reason why the Christian stuff doesn't kick me out, because I did independent research and learned some things about the old pagan stuff. And it's very easy to see all that other knowledge lurking around in the background.
Because Tumnus is a faun, a satyr, the embodiment of sexual abandon. Because Lucy and Susan dance with Bacchus and the Maenads. Because it's hard to believe that the White Witch's temptations of Edmund never went any farther than sweets. Because the witches are beautiful and deadly and tempting and never really die. Because Digory thinks Jadis beautiful. Because all the children are standing at the edge of puberty, and several of them may have already edged over. Because the Pevensie children grow up twice. Because Tirian's great love is a unicorn. Because there are all these bloody human-bestial mixes and humanoid people who all seem to live with each other and interact as equals and something's gotta come up. Because Aravis, despite her disdain for riches, has lived in the heart of the heat of sensuality for most of her youth. Because Digory goes on all the time about Plato, and must know a thing or two about the sort of Platonic love that is not at all chaste but is, in fact, rather gay. It's all there, all of it, sex and lies and hot desire. Lewis doesn't acknowledge it, but come on. Fauns. Bacchus. Jadis' red, red lips in her white face. Growing up. Awakening. Ruddy Plato.
Sometimes I wonder if Lewis meant it. He was, after all, both an atheist and a deist for a long time. Did he realize that he couldn't make the things of Dionysius into the things of Apollo, much less Jehovah? Or was he too much a convert? Was he innocent of his own subtext, writing about things that he meant to be pure but which are irrevocably tainted with the mysteries of the earthy, the ancient, the decidedly non-Christian?
Either way, it's there.
And now I have to start writing fic because I've been bloody iconning all day. I really need a photoshop program--all I can do right now is crop. Bah.
Of course, this is nothing new. Narnia was my proto-fandom, and when I was seven I had this book that was a "companion"-type thing that had definitions for everything in the books and I used to have my friends quiz me and yeah, I was a little dork over those books.
But all of a sudden I'm coming back to them and this is different. It's nothing so simple or so innocent. Right now it's about perversion, in a way, about taking this innocent little kids' book with Christian messages up the wazoo and making into sex and lies and violence and desire and repulsion and temptation and falling. There's a thrill to doing that sort of thing with any children's book, I think, and I'm not entirely sure why. But with Narnia there's this other part where you know that the world in nowhere near so pure as Lewis writes it, that you know that there's a dark underbelly of Narnia just like everything else. Lewis tried to take all the old pagan stuff and weave it into a sweet little story, pure and neutered, and that's the reason why the Christian stuff doesn't kick me out, because I did independent research and learned some things about the old pagan stuff. And it's very easy to see all that other knowledge lurking around in the background.
Because Tumnus is a faun, a satyr, the embodiment of sexual abandon. Because Lucy and Susan dance with Bacchus and the Maenads. Because it's hard to believe that the White Witch's temptations of Edmund never went any farther than sweets. Because the witches are beautiful and deadly and tempting and never really die. Because Digory thinks Jadis beautiful. Because all the children are standing at the edge of puberty, and several of them may have already edged over. Because the Pevensie children grow up twice. Because Tirian's great love is a unicorn. Because there are all these bloody human-bestial mixes and humanoid people who all seem to live with each other and interact as equals and something's gotta come up. Because Aravis, despite her disdain for riches, has lived in the heart of the heat of sensuality for most of her youth. Because Digory goes on all the time about Plato, and must know a thing or two about the sort of Platonic love that is not at all chaste but is, in fact, rather gay. It's all there, all of it, sex and lies and hot desire. Lewis doesn't acknowledge it, but come on. Fauns. Bacchus. Jadis' red, red lips in her white face. Growing up. Awakening. Ruddy Plato.
Sometimes I wonder if Lewis meant it. He was, after all, both an atheist and a deist for a long time. Did he realize that he couldn't make the things of Dionysius into the things of Apollo, much less Jehovah? Or was he too much a convert? Was he innocent of his own subtext, writing about things that he meant to be pure but which are irrevocably tainted with the mysteries of the earthy, the ancient, the decidedly non-Christian?
Either way, it's there.
And now I have to start writing fic because I've been bloody iconning all day. I really need a photoshop program--all I can do right now is crop. Bah.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-16 01:42 am (UTC)You know, you're absolutely right. As a longtime atheist myself, the discovery that there were obvious Christian symbolisms in Narnia (a discovery I did not make until a few years after first reading the books, having actually read the Bible) ought to have put me off, but it didn't, and I don't understand why. For me--I know that there is a 'dark underbelly' to mythological characters, but that is not what still draws me to Narnia. I think--and this is probably just me--that since I knew the fauns, etc. to begin with in a 'depraved' context--I was pleased that someone had chosen to make them *innocent.* I'm no lover of children and I don't accept the idea of a Jehovah; Apollo, your golden mean, is far more congenial to me.
And it frightens me, because at times I feel certain as you do that the Turkish Delight was a symbol of something else. For then where should we be? My younger self, struggling to write a sequel to Narnia (yes, this was in second grade; yes, I entitled it "The Next Great Story!")needs somewhere to park her hat that has no hidden meaning, no darker connotations.
Or maybe she just needs to grow up.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-16 02:07 am (UTC)And "The Next Great Story"? Made me laugh so hard! Because yes, I did the exact same thing as an eleven-year-old! Except I don't think it ever got beyond a few sentences in length.
I don't find the darkness upsetting, though, because even as a kid I was never afraid of the dark. That side of everything is beautiful too, just as fair as the realm of Apollo. They exist as a duality, neither whole without the other. The night is beautiful, mysterious, luxurious. Yes, there is loss in having to grow up, but there is gain as well. Sex, for instance :P As Lewis puts it, we should eventually grow out of being childish but never cease to be childlike. I like the wolrd best when I can see all the halves of it, child-woman light-dark innocence-pleasure.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-16 02:36 am (UTC)